


Loving Him Was Red

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coda, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Institutions, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3890746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sastiel Headcanon: Coda to 7x17: Months after Castiel was put into intensive care, Sam, against Dean's wishes, paid the angel multiple night visits. Along with Meg's watchful eye, the only thing that kept Castiel from teetering over the edge was the smell of his sheets - Sam's smell - that lingered after he left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving Him Was Red

Too many victimless bodies, some disembodied, some disemboweled, enough to stir the papers for months. They left out their shrieks, their earnest pleas to spare them from a bloody slavery—it was the ultimate _petimus_ of a ripened humanity—and the power. The power that surged through his veins into the very hands that once saved Heaven was the paramount reason he had had a smile on his face.  There's nothing like holding someone's life in your hands.

Beneath him, the ground quaked like that of a pendulum not quite devoted to equilibrium. In his desperate state of delirium, he cast a glance at his hands. Though sandwiched between surplus cells tighter than a miser during winter solstice, he felt a glutinous substance between his fingernails, like he was a child and had been (not to commit a double entendres) caught red-handed digging into a velvet cake. He certainly had the look to him, except he knew what he dug his hands into and it was far from a pastry.

Like a taper in the wind, the image flickered and he was standing in the middle of another macabre scene. He recognized this place as the Heaven of the autistic man who died in a porcelain vessel: briny air, blue sky, and fields greener than the comeliest carnation. That was until he got ahold of it. Then his brethren came after him like moths to a flame, and died in the same strung-out fashion. Every now and then (mostly now, since he was incarcerated, severed from reality, and had boundless time to think) he wondered what the man thought when he turned from his routine kite-flying and saw his Kingdom Come littered in the bodies of the Heavenly Host.

Another flicker left him to blanched walls, sheets, and clothes. Surrounding him was a tamed fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man—nothing more than a nine-to-five meat suit on the ironed surface— bent over, ten fingers splayed out, occasionally running over the borrowed lines embedded in his palms like a tractor would crop circles.

“Know any campfire songs?” Silence answered him. “C’mon, Yankee Doodle, you have to know one.”

Yankee Doodle—or Castiel, as that was the name given to him by the Angel Boy Scouts—gnashed his teeth. _He wasn’t real,_ he’s told himself for the fourteenth time this morning. He was counting sheep, a practice illustrated by one Harriet Martineau, an English sociologist in the late 1830s, in a novel entitled _Illustrations of the Political Economy_ (now that he wasn’t throwing out his arm in war or bleeding for the Winchesters, he had time to hit up the bookstand in the recreational room), when a rapid series of explosives thundered in his ears. Lucifer just roared.

Needless to say, he could safely render the Sheep Theory obsolete.

“Okay, how ‘bout we play fortune teller? Pick a number over twelve and I’ll tell you your future.”

Despite Ray Wise mouthing at him 24/7 (he also had time to catch up on some of those pop-culture references Dean needled him for— _Reaper,_ to little surprise, was Lucifer’s favorite sitcom), Castiel was very much lonely. Occasionally, he would talk to Meg, but that was usually when he wanted something. His Bible-thumping therapist hadn’t encouraged him, either. More than extra sheets or a watered down enchilada, what the angel really wanted was someone who would forgo all forms of vocal communication for a single embrace. Castiel never had much physical intimacy before he became Emmanuel. How he wished to be Emmanuel again. Maybe he wouldn’t be in an institution.

_I remember you. I remember everything._

That night was the last he saw of the Winchesters. Until about a month later, a man checked in under the name Travis Bickle, cousin to Castiel Novak. It was a weak alias, but it was better than anything Castiel could have conceived on short notice. Luckily, the RNs and psychotherapists on duty were too busy dosing patients and dealing with tipped relatives to watch _Taxi Driver_.

Sure enough, he had an armful of Sam Winchester (Cas was fortunate he was sent the brother that wasn’t hugaphobic because there was no way he was letting him go anytime soon) and a spoonful from the latest pages of the Winchester Gospel _._ That was one thing about Sam’s company that differed from Dean’s. Despite what had happened between visits, he was always amicable, practically glowing when he blabbed about beheading third-world creatures. He treated Cas like blood, and that felt good.

“I know you probably get asked this a dozen times a day,” Sam started in, and Cas didn’t have to be telekinetic to know what he was going to ask of him, “but are you feeling okay? You’re a little pale.”

 _Blood,_ he recounted. That sent a shiver up his spine he couldn’t retract. “Yes, I think I’m just tired.”

“Satan’s still burning the midnight oil, huh?”

“Midnight, midday, midevening—”A boom box blasted **“Takin’ care of business, everyday!”**

He vied to keep his focus on his friend, who may or may not have driven hundreds of miles cross-country (even though the Winchesters do that all the time) to see him. Sam grew quiet. “I’m sorry,” he said glumly, shaking his head, “if it wasn’t for me—”

"Are you hungry? I couldn’t bear the burden of you driving home on an empty stomach.” _If it wasn’t for you, the world wouldn’t have averted the apocalypse, mass hysteria—I wouldn’t have a purpose._ Cas rested his hand just above the taller man’s knee, signifying the words unspoken. He left his sapphire eyes kind and open, as the man before him had always been to him.

Sam pivoted his head. His jaw was tight but his words were loose: “It’s fine—I’m fine,” he amended sharply, reaching for Castiel’s hand and patting it a few times, as if making sure he was still there. _Who said I was leaving any time soon?_ “What about you? I could get something from the cafeteria."

The chorus of “I Want to Know What Love Is” blares in the background. "It's alright, really. I've learned to stray away from solid foods. Lucifer, he'll just turn it into—"

"Maggots?"

"Tapeworm," he confirmed concurrently with the unforeseen and very much tickled Lucifer. Though it obviously wasn't an honorable memory, Sam's hazelnut eyes crinkled at the mention of the segmented larvae. Cas was just glad he was smiling. "But he's been reading up on the history of parasites. Who knows, maybe he'll get creative."

The rest of their day was spent loitering aimlessly around the institution. (Lucifer trailed idly behind him, taking a hacksaw to a dozen heads that weren’t loose enough as it was.) Cas wasn’t surprised that the youngest knew the layout of the dreary establishment better than him. Spending an overnight with the disembodied soul of a self-proclaimed young man and his similarly disturbed sister _and_ being strapped to an electric chair would do that.

Sometimes—only sometimes, he would tell himself, although it was more than he would admit to—he would wonder what the circumstances would’ve been if Sam laid down his life then and there. Gave up, became the next John Doe in the weekly paper under all of the other overlooked obituaries. Dean wouldn’t go on, that’s for certain. Or he would die trying to prove that certainty. As for Cas, well, he wouldn’t be in a home for the mentally unstable. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad ideation. Without Sam, he wouldn’t have found it.

“Clarity? Cas, I think those antipsychotics are kicking in.”

He knew Sam meant the statement as a joke, but Castiel didn’t make the attempt to humor him. Narcotics had no use on him, no matter how many times they tried to clip his wings. He’d been around long enough to see the effects of those with little to no sanity left—and that was after the drugs kicked in. The whole place was a walking side effect. Cas couldn’t remember fighting for a humanity so hapless. This, among other paraphernalia he learned during his time in the institute, was his clarity.

He explained this and more with a shy smile. “Then there’s you.”

Sam shoved his hands into his gray hoodie and ducked his head with a curt laugh. “I don’t know what more I could possibly offer to someone with an angel on their shoulder.”

“My time here has been very real,” he said, itching at the latter word. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve royally screwed the fate of the world and managed to hurt two of the people I care about the most in the process. On a few occasions, I’ve nearly sealed my own fate. Not only did I feel it unwise, but that I didn’t deserve to get off the hook that easy. Then you came.”

Perhaps if he had a righteous angel on his shoulder, it might have told him that was an unwise decision to tell Sam as much. His lips were slightly parted as his eyes shifted to the floor, searching for a new focal point, probably. “So, what do you do for fun around here?” _I’m glad I came, then._

“ _Sorry_ is a popular game.”

 _Sorry_ it was, then _Mancala_ (Lucifer’s favorite because he liked the ‘lost marbles’ allegory), and even _Twister,_ which Sam was surprisingly amazing at. (He said something about dating someone bendy but Cas was only half-listening as he extended his right arm to the farthest red circle. He’d imagine if Dean had tagged along, he would’ve countered with something equally as crude.) Limbs entangled, their bodies nearly caved in on each other like the two clumsy oafs they were.

Sam won by default. He was surprisingly competitive.

They returned to Castiel’s room a few hours later when they were informed that it was an hour until the lights went out. No one in the blocks had windows, so it’s not like he knew the difference.

The same nurse lady informed Sam that the hospice couldn’t have visitors after hours. Sam nodded, but remained rooted to the edge of the bed. It was hard to believe this was the same place he spent deliberating, sulking, tossing and turning, but probably, if anything, building defense mechanisms against the Devil in the flesh (or somebody else’s flesh, if you wanted to be politically incorrect…).

It was strange, but sometimes he thought he could still smell him on his sheets. Maybe it was just Castiel clinging onto what his therapist calls a state of regression or maybe he really was going crazy. Either way, it was a specific scent: laundry detergent and Pine-Sol mixed with a lot of bodily secretion. He need not wonder why on the last one with Ray Wise breathing down his neck.

Speaking of, where was his brother? Not that he didn’t mind being deprived of bleating baby goats or classic rock (no offense, Dean), but still…

“I guess that’s my cue,” said the taller of the two. Smiling weakly, he put his hand on his shoulder. “Promise you’ll take care of yourself, man. I don’t want to be the one that gets the call, capishe?”

Before he could reply, a shot pierced through the air. Started by the _bang_ alone, Castiel recoiled, hands flying over his ears. Something gummy coated his hands. He glanced down in a weak effort, trembling like a cowardly pup, to find blood splayed across them. Turning, he witnessed even more, thick and clotted, running down Sam’s temporal lobe. Maniacal laughter rang throughout the room.

Lucifer held a .38 special. Sam was shaking him. The room was spinning like a bad acid trip.

Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling Castiel onto what he hoped and thought was his bed. The laughter died down, but there was still the faint hiccup of possibility that Lucifer would strike again. He took no chances, violently fisting his hands and face into his puce-colored Henley. He needed to absorb every last facet of Sam Winchester before he was denied or doubted that simple reality.

His body was inviting, wrapping around his small and shivering physique. There was no space between them now, no space for the Devil to come between them. Castiel combed his fingers nimbly through his hair, over side of his face. No sign of forced trauma—just the boy who saved the world. Just the boy who was holding him until the nightmares passed. Just the boy who saved his life.

With his heart thudding in his chest, he didn’t need to see his future. He saw it all in burning red.

**-END-**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr @ doppelganging-misha and feel free to submit prompts!


End file.
